BATON ROUGE, La. -- The mailbag blew up Sunday after Alabama's 21-17 win over LSU Saturday night in Tiger Stadium. Here are some of the best comments:

From Mark: Howard Cosell (of all people) had a great line for the prevent defense: "You are preventing a win."

Mark was writing in reaction to LSU's defense, which gave up touchdowns to Alabama's two-minute offense at the end of both halves, including the winning touchdown with 51 seconds left.

From Larry: Alabama 166 (rushing) yards to LSU's 139 yards. Alabama 6.6 yards (per carry) to LSU's 2.8 yards. If Alabama just pounded it down LSU's throat they would have run away with it. They got to pass happy.

Indeed, Alabama had a more efficient ground game than LSU, but threw the ball more than half of its plays. It's notable, however, that two of the Tide's three touchdowns came in a two-minute offense, when Bama threw it almost every down.

From Mark: I don't mind the trickery. What I do mind is the stupidity of trying a virtually unmakeable field goal at the end of the first half that gives Alabama the best starting field position of the half with 1:06 on the clock and all 3 timeouts.

I agree. The 55-yard field goal attempt by LSU shortly before the end of the first half was a head-scratcher. It was too much of a low-percentage attempt and allowed Alabama to have good field position (its own 38) to drive for a last-minute score. And the Tide did score a touchdown to take a 14-3 halftime lead.

From Joe: People need to lay off of Les Miles. They played the No. 1 team in the country to a four-point game and people are talking about him like he has no clue what he's doing. The man's a great coach.

Miles' LSU career record winning percentage (.804) is the best among modern era Tigers coaches. His 82-20 LSU record puts him at No. 3 in all-time wins at LSU. When you look at the 20 losses, no LSU coach has taken more heat per loss than Miles.